Collaboration with Egyptian Film Music Composer, Remon Sakr

January 06, 2017

THE EPIC OF THEBES (STORY OF PASSION & WAR)

I am delighted to announce an epic collaboration with the Egyptian film score composer, Remon Sakr

For my collaboration in this project, I provided an ancient Egyptian-themed improvisation for lyre, which Sakr orchestrated for two of the tracks for his debut album, "The Epic of Thebes (Story of Passion & War)" - an epic musical journey into the era of Pharaoh Ahmose I and his struggle against the Hyksos...

For track 5, "The Holy Nile (Hymn to Hapi)", the melodic theme I arranged for my lyre is skilfully orchestrated with a rich texture of strings and delicately punctuated by harp chords, set against evocative natural sounds of gently lapping water and birdsong.

For track 7, "Salvations Hymn for Amun (In the North Temple of Amun)" Sakr orchestrated my lyre theme with the exotic, ancient timbres of Egyptian ney flute set against a background of hypnotic Egyptian rhythms, to set the 'ancient Egyptian feel', leading up to the ending section of the track; featuring haunting, sacred-sounding vocals, to conjure up stunning mental imagery of the sort of long-forgotten, ancient sacred rites which may once have been performed in the Temple of Amun.

Here is the official 'promo' video for the album, in which brief clips of my lyre improvisation can be heard at 0:52 and 1:37 minutes into the video:

Here is my own rough 'live' performance of the improvisation (attempting to evoke some of Sakr's amazing ancient Egyptian-themed orchestral textures for the tracks, with my Boss RC-1 Loop Pedal!):